After Mourning: Notes On The End Of Beauty And The Moving Image

Abstract

This text explores the expulsion of beauty and sublimity from contemporary art, marked by the postmodern disillusionment brought about by the art system and market. In this context, works such as Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Still Life are discussed, reflecting the transience and melancholy of a possible “end of art.” Drawing on theorists like Baudrillard and Panofsky, the text questions the loss of aesthetic ideals in contemporary art, which is associated with historical traumas and the commodification of the spectacle of horror. Subsequently, the text offers some avenues for considering the recovery of beauty and the sublime, emphasizing the need to reimagine an art that, —from within contingency— re-establishes the aesthetic correlation of human beings and their place in the world. This is achieved by articulating a perspective that transcends the mere contemplation of the ruin. We posit these possibilities from certain artistic practices linked to avant-garde cinema, specifically those that integrate the “poetic-mystical” (Val del Omar, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, etc.), movements that move outside the art market.